The Almohad dynasty (properly Muwahhadis, i.e. "Unitarians,"
the name being corrupted through the Spanish), a Muslim
religious power which founded the fifth Moorish dynasty in
the 12th century, and conquered all northern Africa as far as
Egypt, together with Moslem Spain. It originated with Muhammad
ibn Tumart, a member of the Masmuda, a Berber tribe of the
Atlas mountains. Ibn Tumart was the son of a lamplighter in a mosque
and had been noted for his piety from his youth; he was small,
ugly, and misshapen and lived the life of a devotee-beggar.

As a youth he performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, whence
he was expelled on account of his severe strictures on the
laxity of others, and thence wandered to Bagdad, where he
attached himself to the school of the orthodox doctor [[al
Ashari]]. But he made a system of his own by combining
the teaching of his master with parts of the doctrines of
others, and with mysticism imbibed from the great teacher
Ghazali. His main principle was a rigid unitarianism
which denied the independent existence of the attributes of
God, as being incompatible with his unity, and therefore a
polytheistic idea. Muhammad in fact represented a revolt
against the anthropomorphism of commonplace Muslim
orthodoxy, but he was a rigid predestinarian and a strict
observer of the law. After his return to Morocco at the age
of twenty-eight, he began preaching and agitating, heading
riotous attacks on wine-shops and on other manifestations of
laxity. He even went so far as to assault the sister of
the Murabti (Almoravide) amir `Ali III, in the streets
of Fez, because she was going about unveiled after the
manner of Berber women. `Ali, who was very deferential to
any exhibition of piety, allowed him to escape unpunished.

Ibn Tumart, who had been driven from several other towns for
exhibitions of reforming zeal, now took refuge among his own
people, the Masmuda, in the Atlas. It is highly probable that
his influence would not have outlived him, if he had not found
a lieutenant in 'Abd-el-Mumin el Kumi, another Berber, from
Algeria, who was undoubtedly a soldier and statesman of a high
order. When Ibn Tumart died in 1128 at the monastery or
ribat which he had founded in the Atlas at Tinmal, after
suffering a severe defeat by the Murabtis, 'Abd-el-Mumin
kept his death secret for two years, till his own influence
was established. He then came forward as the lieutenant
of the Mahdi Ibn Tumart. Between 1130 and his death in
1163, 'Abd-el-Mumin not only rooted out the Murabtis,
but extended his power over all northern Africa as far as
Egypt, becoming amir of Morocco in 1149. Muslim Spain
followed the fate of Africa, and in 1170 the Muwahhadis
transferred their capital to Seville, a step followed by
the founding of the great mosque, now superseded by the
cathedral, the tower of which they erected in 1184 to mark the
accession of Ya`kub el Mansur. From the time of Yusef
II, however, they governed their co-religionists in Spain
and Central North Africa through lieutenants, their dominions
outside Morocco being treated as provinces. When their
amirs crossed the Straits it was to lead a jihad against
the Christians and to return to their capital, Marrakesh[?].

The Muwahhadi princes had a longer and a more distinguished
career than the Murabtis (or Almoravides). Yusef
II. or "Abu Ya`kub" (1163-1184), and Ya`kub I. or "Al
Mansur" (1184-1199), the successors of Abd-el-Mumin, were
both able men. They were fanatical, and their tyranny drove
numbers of their Jewish and Christian subjects to take refuge
in the growing Christian states of Portugal, Castile and
Aragon. But in the end they became less fanatical than the
Murabtis, and Ya`kub al Mansur was a highly accomplished man,
who wrote a good Arabic style and who protected the philosopher
Averroes. His title of Al Mansur, "The Victorious," was
earned by the defeat he inflicted on
Alfonso VIII of Castile at Alarcos in 1195. But the Christian states in Spain were
becoming too well organized to be overrun by the Muslims,
and the Muwahhadis made no permanent advance against
them. In 1212 Mahommed III, "En-Nasir" (1199-1214), the
successor of al Mansur, was utterly defeated by the allied
five Christian princes of Spain, Navarre and Portugal, at
the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in the Sierra Morena. All the Moorish dominions in Spain were lost in the next few years, partly by the Christian conquest of Andalusia, and partly by the revolt of the Muslims of Granada, who put themselves under the protection of the Christian kings and became their vassals.

The fanaticism of the Muwahhadis did not prevent them from
encouraging the establishment of Christians even in Fez, and
after the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa they occasionally
entered into alliances with the kings of Castile. In Africa
they were successful in expelling the garrisons placed in
some of the coast towns by the Norman kings of Sicily. The
history of their decline differs from that of the Murabtis,
whom they had displaced. They were not assailed by a great
religious movement, but destroyed piecemeal by the revolt of
tribes and districts. Their most effective enemies were the
Beni Marin ("Merinides") who founded the next Moroccan
dynasty, the sixth. The last representative of the line,
Idris IV., "El Wathik"' was reduced to the possession
of Marrakesh, where he was murdered by a slave in 1269.